The Learning Curve Podcast

Wednesdays at 12 pm

The Learning Curve is where you’ll find straight talk about the nation’s hottest education stories—news and opinion from the schoolyard to the campaign trail. Cohosts Gerard Robinson and Cara Candal serve up provocative commentary and interview school leaders, innovators, bestselling authors, policymakers and more.

Listeners can find The Learning Curve on iTunes (Apple Podcasts), Stitcher, Spotify, and the Choice Media mobile app. Also find it online at Ricochet and Pioneer Institute. Follow The Learning Curve on:

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Play the latest episode:

Ashley Soifer on Microschools, Pods, & Homeschooling

March 29, 2023

This week on The Learning Curve, Ashley Soifer, Chief Innovation Officer of the National Microschooling Center discusses these innovative schooling options, in which families and innovators are using a wide array of education choices that offer parents flexibility and greater control over how, where, what, and when their children learn.

About Our Cohosts

Cara Stillings Candal, Ed.D. is Managing Director for Policy at ExcelinEd. Cara has spent the last 10 years working in education policy as a Senior Fellow with both Pioneer Institute and the Center for Education Reform. She was also a founding team member of the National Academy of Advanced Teacher Education (NAATE) and a research assistant professor at Boston University in the Department of Educational Leadership and Development. Cara has authored/edited more than 25 papers and three books on education policy. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Indiana University, a Masters of Arts in Social Science from the University of Chicago, and a Doctorate of Education from Boston University. Cara is the author most recently of Pioneer Institute’s book, The Fight for the Best Charter Public Schools in the Nation.

Gerard Robinson is a Fellow of Practice at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Charlottesville, Virginia. ASCF uses basic and applied research to educate the public and key societal leadership groups about the nature and challenges of late-modern society and conducts inquiry into humane and democratic responses to these challenges. Previously, he was Executive Director of the Center for Advancing Opportunity, in Washington, D.C. Robinson is a fellow with AEI, and was Secretary of Education in Virginia and Commissioner of Education in Florida. Gerard tweets at @gerard_924.

Browse all episodes below:

India Unbound: Gurcharan Das on the Rise of the World’s Largest Free-Market Democracy

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February 15, 2023

This week on The Learning Curve, Gurcharan Das, author, public intellectual, and former CEO of Procter & Gamble India, discusses the rise of India since independence to become a thriving, incredibly diverse nation of 1.4 billion people—the world's largest free-market democracy.

Dr. Deborah Plant on Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”

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February 8, 2023

This week on The Learning Curve, Dr. Deborah Plant, editor of the 2018 book Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo" discusses Zora Neale Hurston's work as an anthropologist telling the story of one of the last survivors of the infamous Middle Passage.

George Weigel Discusses Pope St. John Paul II for National Catholic Schools Week

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February 1, 2023

This week on The Learning Curve, George Weigel, the biographer of Pope St. John Paul II explores how Karol Wojtyla's education, deep faith, and experiences during World War II shaped his life as a spiritual leader and helped lead to the fall of Communism.

Award-Winning UK Author & Filmmaker Laurence Rees on the Holocaust, Auschwitz, and Remembrance

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January 27, 2023

To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Laurence Rees, a former head of BBC TV History Programmes and author of The Holocaust: A New History, sheds light on Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and the cultural and political conditions that led to the Holocaust.

D.C.’s Kevin Chavous on National School Choice Week

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January 25, 2023

This week on The Learning Curve, Cara and Gerard talk with Kevin Chavous, president of Stride K12, Inc. and a former member of the Council of the District of Columbia, on the growing movement toward school choice in education. Chavous discusses recent Supreme Court rulings and the expansion of school choice programs, education savings accounts, and vouchers.